A child was in her arms, and she looked dragged and worn.

But all the way down the moor as she came towards him David had heard her singing hymns.
He hung his head and passed on.

But in the evening he went, found three or four other boys his own age or older, the woman, and her husband.

The woman sang some of the most passionate Methodist hymns; the husband, a young shoemaker, already half dead of asthma and bronchitis, told his 'experiences' in a voice broken by incessant coughing; one of the boys, a rough specimen, known to David as a van-boy from some calico-printing works in the neighbourhood, prayed aloud, breaking down into sobs in the middle; and David, at first obstinately silent, found himself joining before the end in the groans and 'Amens,' by force of a contagious excitement he half despised but could not withstand.
The little prayer-meeting, however, broke up somewhat in confusion.
There was not much real difference of opinion at this time in Clough End, which was, on the whole, a strongly religious town.
Even the Churchmanship of it was decidedly evangelical, ready at any moment to make common cause with Dissent against Ritualism, if such a calamity should ever threaten the little community, and very ready to join, more or less furtively, in the excitements of Dissenting revivals.

Jerry Timmins and his set represented the only serious blot on what the pious Clough Endian might reasonably regard as a fair picture.